GOP leader Krahulik resigns amid allegations of lewd photos

Wednesday

Feb 12, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Orange County Republican Chairman Robert Krahulik has resigned after just four months as party leader, felled by a controversy that appeared to have abated last week with his agreeing to take a 60-day leave.

BY CHRIS MCKENNA

Orange County Republican Chairman Robert Krahulik has resigned after just four months as party leader, felled by a controversy that appeared to have abated last week with his agreeing to take a 60-day leave.

The Republican Committee announced Tuesday that Krahulik had submitted a letter of resignation, and that the party’s first vice chairman, Courtney Canfield-Greene, will replace him for the duration of his two-year term as chairman, which lasts until the fall of 2015.“I am pleased Mr. Krahulik has put the Orange County Republican Party and its candidates first,” Canfield-Greene said in a statement. “Now we can all re-focus on the critical work that lay ahead during the 2014 Election season.”

Krahulik had been forced to defend himself against a recent allegation that he texted lewd photographs to a woman who contacted him on Facebook.

He called the issue a personal matter with no bearing on his party leadership, but was soon asked by fellow Republican officers to step aside.

He seemed to have saved his position after meeting with the Republicans’ roughly 60-member executive committee last week, saying then he would take a 60-day leave of absence so the controversy would cause no distractions for the party.

But pressure resumed two days later, when New York State Republican Chairman Ed Cox publicly called for Krahulik to resign, and the Orange County Federation of Republican Women echoed that stance.

According to Tuesday’s committee statement, Canfield-Greene is the first woman to lead the county Republicans on a permanent basis since Katharine St. George of Tuxedo – an 18-year congresswoman and cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt – did so from 1942 to 1948.

Her ascension to chairwoman elevates Austin DuBois, the son of Sheriff Carl DuBois, to GOP first vice chairman.